Dachine Rainer

Who was Dachine Rainer?

Dachine Rainer was an American born English writer.

Dachine Rainer was born Sylvia Newman in New York on January 13, 1921, the daughter of Polish Jews, and grew up in Manhattan. As a child her political views were influenced by the executions in 1927 of the Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. She earned a scholarship to study English Literature at Hunter College and around this time settled on her nom de plume. During the next 20 years she had poems, essays, and articles published in many American periodicals, among them The New Republic and The Nation. In 1958 her novella 'A Room at the Inn' was published, followed two years later by another book called 'The Uncomfortable Inn'. The latter of which was reviewed by Rebecca West and the two subsequently became friends upon Rainer moving to London in 1961. Rainer is buried in Highgate Cemetery, where her tombstone reads "Poet and Anarchist".